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Mary Worth, 4/18/20

OK, I’m sorry, I’ve been willing to indulge Hugo’s cartoonish Francophilia, but did he really say that Hamilton, America’s most beloved cultural product of the last decade, isn’t as good as some tired-ass cabaret show that’s been running for more than 20 years at a venue that caters strictly to tourists and nostalgists? This will not stand, monsieur. This means war.

Judge Parker, 4/18/20

“We’re all gonna touch each other and stand in each other’s personal space and breathe into each other’s faces and give each other Covid-19! It’s gonna be a blast!”

Six Chix, 4/18/20

Big news, everybody: aliens are real and they’re horny as hell

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Beetle Bailey, 4/7/20

Way back in the mists of time, like the late ’90s and early ’00s, many people looked at the Internet on primitive CRT screens that could only display 256 different colors, which gave rise to a limited “web-safe color palette” made up of shades that you could be sure all your users would see properly. I’m reasonably certain that when I first started this blog in 2004, the colorized comics from King Features still used that palette, which would explain some of the odder coloring choices, like the electric blue sports coats so beloved by the square gentlemen of my late beloved Apartment 3-G.

Anyway, I assume that the anonymous, underpaid comics colorists long ago shifted to accommodate the literally millions of distinct shades that modern monitors and touchscreen devices are capable of displaying, which is why I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that what Cookie is serving up today isn’t a “sloppy joe” as most of us would understand it, i.e., ground beef in a dark red sauce. No, the men of Camp Swampy have their plates running with bright, red, fresh blood, its color picked out of a near-infinite spectrum to indicate that they’ve been offered the still-steaming viscera of something — or someone — who’s been freshly killed.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/7/20

Wow, I have to admit some deep-rooted prejudice that I wasn’t even conscious of holding: I’ve always assumed that Doc Pritchard was a flatlander who ended up in Hootin’ Holler as part of a federal rural medicine program to clear his loans from med school, or maybe he’s just lying low to avoid multiple active malpractice suits. But no, it looks like he’s actually from this place, or at least is tied to its rocky soil via kin; since he’s familiar with their down-home rural ways, that may explain why he’s cheerfully moonlighting as a large-animal vet today.

Six Chix, 4/7/20

Look, the world’s a little crazy right now, so if you have the modestly prominent platform of a day’s share in a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip, why not use it to air out your most petty and specific grievance? Do you believe not only that deep-dish pizza is garbage, but that those assholes from Chicago don’t even really like it? Go ahead and tell the world! What are they going to do, violate “safe at home” orders to come get you?

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Six Chix, 4/3/20

I suppose the “joke” in today’s Six Chix is that dentists love to ask deep, philosophical questions that require a lot of talking in response while they have their hands and a bunch of dental implements in your mouth, amiright folks? Amiright? But because this panel features only the basics of a dental facility surrounded by a blank, featureless void, I’m enjoying myself by thinking of this as a depiction of someone’s specific hell. “So what do you think happens when we die?” asks the dentist-demon. “Do you think it’s a real showy stereotypical fire-and-brimstone thing? Or do you think it’s something maybe less painful, but something we know, something we hate and fear, and we experience it forever? Probably the second one, right? Let’s get the tartar off that top gum line again.”

Daddy Daze, 4/3/20

So it seems that Coffee Goth is in fact Daddy Daze Daddy’s pal and a recurring character in this strip. The fact that the two of them are bellied up to a coffee shop counter rather than a bar honestly makes me realize how many male comic strip characters’ social lives revolve around going to a bar on a regular basis to commiserate with other regulars, which seems a little dated to me. But Daddy Daze Daddy isn’t like that! He’s not some sad drunk! He’s a much more modern archetype: a sad coffee guy! That’s a totally different and much more enlightened texture of sadness!

Mark Trail, 4/3/20

“But now you’re also going out into the woods with me in the middle of the night! That seems like a bad idea! But I still trust you! I’m not really very smart!”